airbridge

Lets older network scanners and printers show up on Macs, iPhones and iPads with no driver: scanners as AirScan, printers as AirPrint.

Run it on any Linux machine on the same network. It finds the devices itself, bridges the ones Apple can't use, and leaves devices that already support AirScan or AirPrint alone.

Install

Docker (Linux)

git clone https://github.com/tobhoster/airbridge && cd airbridge
docker compose up -d

Homebrew (Linux)

brew install tobhoster/airbridge/airbridge
brew services start airbridge

Kubernetes: build and push the image, then kubectl apply -k deploy/kubernetes (set your image in deploy/kubernetes/kustomization.yaml).

Then open Image Capture (or Preview → Import from Scanner) on a Mac: the scanner is listed under Shared. Printers appear in the normal Add Printer dialog. The status page is http://<host>:8090/.

Raspberry Pi

Use a Pi 4 or 5 with 64-bit Raspberry Pi OS. The first docker compose up compiles airbridge on the Pi, which takes a while; later starts are instant.

curl -fsSL https://get.docker.com | sh
git clone https://github.com/tobhoster/airbridge && cd airbridge
sudo docker compose up -d

Check it is running:

curl http://localhost:8090/healthz          # {"status":"ok",...}
curl -s http://localhost:8090/ | grep -o '<td>[^<]*</td>' | head   # bridged scanners

On a Mac, dns-sd -B _uscan._tcp should list the scanner.

Brother's brscan4 driver only exists for x86. On a Pi, Brother scanners are reached through WSD instead, which sane-airscan finds automatically when the device supports it (the Dell MFP E514dw does). Everything else (SANE backends, CUPS printing) is the same as on x86.

Configuration

Nothing is required. Optional environment variables:

Variable	Default	Purpose
AIRBRIDGE_NO_SCAN, AIRBRIDGE_NO_PRINT	—	Hosts, names or IPs never to bridge
AIRBRIDGE_LOCATION	host name	Shown on the Mac
AIRBRIDGE_INTERFACES	auto	Interfaces to serve on
AIRBRIDGE_ALLOW	LAN subnets	Extra client networks (CIDRs)
AIRBRIDGE_MODEL_MAP	built in	Rebadged Brother models, Name=BROTHER-MODEL;…
AIRBRIDGE_PRINTING	auto	off for scanning only
AIRBRIDGE_PORT	8090	HTTP port
AIRBRIDGE_BACKEND	sane	fake serves a demo scanner

Build arguments: BRSCAN4=0 skips Brother's driver; PRINTING=0 skips CUPS; PRINTER_DRIVERS picks the driver packages.

Pitfalls

• mDNS needs host networking. Bridged container networks and Kubernetes pod networks don't reach the LAN, so use network_mode: host or hostNetwork: true. Docker Desktop on macOS and Windows can't do this.
• brscan4 crashes without /etc/protocols (slim images). The image installs netbase.
• Dell and other rebadged Brothers need the Brother model name. The Dell MFP E514dw → DCP-L2540DW mapping is built in.
• Printers on DHCP move. airbridge tracks devices by mDNS name, so a new IP is picked up automatically.

Licence

MIT or Apache-2.0. Brother's brscan4 is proprietary and is not part of this repository: the Docker build downloads it from Brother and checks its SHA-256. No prebuilt image is published.

Development notes (tests, benchmarks, fuzzing) are in CONTRIBUTING.md.